One Hour to Madness and Joy
by elizasky
Summary: Letters can't tell you everything. What happened in Paris? How did Jem escape from Germany? Whatever happened to Jerry's lace? Why did Shirley stop writing? These short stories exist in the Glen Notes/Dispatches universe and offer a glimpse behind the WWI letters of the Blythes and Merediths. They are rated M for sexual content and violence.
1. Per Ardua Ad Astra

**Hello, friends.**

 **This short story takes place in the middle of Chapter 35 of _Dispatches_ ("One Hour to Madness and Joy").**

 **It is rated M for sexual content. If that's not your cup of tea, please don't feel any pressure to read it, even if you were a regular _Dispatches_ reader. If you are a new reader (hello!) you can find the backstory for this relationship beginning in _Glen Notes_ (well, beginning in _Spitched Eels_ , I guess) and continuing in _Dispatches_.**

 **Special thanks to MrsVonTrapp for being a champion beta reader and for nudging me over yet another cliff.**

 **Love,**

 **elizasky**

* * *

 **One Hour to Madness and Joy**

 _O something unprov'd! something in a trance!  
_ _To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!  
_ _To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!  
_ _To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!  
_ _To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!  
_ _To rise thither with my inebriate soul!  
_ _To be lost if it must be so!  
_ _To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!  
_ _With one brief hour of madness and joy._

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860

* * *

 _ **Per Ardua Ad Astra**_

Paris

November 1917

(Shirley)

* * *

When the door closes behind him, I lock it three times: lock and deadbolt and a chair thrust firmly under the knob just for good measure. He draws ancient, musty drapes against the afternoon sun and then it is just the two of us, staring at one another across a dim and shabby room, frozen in the simple truth that it has been two years and more than time besides.

We talked in the street and at the Eiffel Tower, where I saw him first and watched him for long minutes while he looked past me without recognition. In the end, I had to approach him and call him by name. My voice was a live wire, startling the blue eyes wide, and he watched me warily as we walked. We talked of mundane things — was your train on time and did you find your way through the city alright and many other nothings as our silent feet carried us here.

Now we have our triple lock and could say anything, if only we would.

He does not remember me. Foolish, to think a few sparse letters, a handful of sly jokes, would be enough to remind him. He has forgotten me; he looks me up and down as if I were a stranger. Did I really expect anything else?

I would turn away. But he has removed his cap and a lawless beam of unblocked sun sparks gold off his hair and I cannot turn away. Does he look different? Perhaps. There are lines that were not always there, and his face seems baked, not sun-kissed or freckled as it always was in our fishing summers. But I would know him anywhere, just by his gait and the chickadee tilt of his head.

He could not say the same. He didn't know me on sight. Now, he peers at me with eyes like a deep channel in the gulf, chilly and sharp. I would turn away.

But he steps toward me and, reaching, takes my own cap, tosses it aside. He presses a pale hand to the wings sewn over my heart. It must be audible to him as it is to me.

My RFC tunic is stylishly smooth, not like the plain, pockety, infantry khaki. He catches his lower lip between his teeth as he works the buckle and I would help him, if only I could move. He finds the concealed buttons and traces their path from shoulder to hip, working them one at a time until he can push the tunic off my shoulders.

It falls away like the creases in his forehead. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. It spreads, unfurling across his features until he has no need of external sunlight.

"There you are."

He kisses me atiptoe, a kiss anchored in heavy boots, vibrating up through khaki puttees and waist and collar, flowing through pliant lips and fingertips skimming over my cheeks.

I melt; I surge. Something gigantic is blossoming in my chest like a genie unentombed. Very well: First, that he would be safe. Second and third, that I might know him again and be known in return.

I move to pull him toward me, but he is right about the uniform. Five buttons on a service dress jacket and it too falls away, a dull husk consigned to the oblivion of the floor. Better. Dropping to one knee, I unwrap and unlace until his feet slip free, unmoored. I rise and he effervesces into my arms, bubbling delight.

One kiss and another. Glowing lips parted under mine, retreating from me as irrepressible smiles.

I am not content with kisses, and go roaming.

Under his jaw, a tiny line, dark and straight, shows where he nicked himself shaving. I wonder where he slept last night, where he woke this morning. Somewhere, he bathed, the mud of Flanders sloughing off, carrying all its filth down a drain.

How, after all this, can he still smell like himself? The superficial scents are changed — harsh army soap and worn serge and the acrid sting of delousing powder. But underneath, something I had always assumed was the smell of ponds and reeds and red Island roads. Perhaps it was only him all along.

Impulsive, I rasp the cut with my tongue and it bleeds afresh. I lick it clean. I never did tell anyone about his close shave. His fingers twine in my hair and an inaudible moan resonates through the lips I press to his throat.

I would draw him out. Gray flannel and placket and sleeves, all the government-issue impedimenta fall away, flimsy, and I wish there were a drain for those, too. I would stay, raising patches of pink along his collarbone, but the undershirt must, must come off, off now, and the only way is to pull back and peel it away over his waking skin.

I am lost at once. Whatever idea I had of tasting the hollow of his throat, of burying my face under his arms and breathing there until the very air in my lungs was only what had passed over him first, all immediately forgotten at the sight of blue eyes gone dark, lips fallen open over a soft and darker mouth.

Perhaps I kiss him too forcefully, or perhaps the taste of blood is my own, surging from every extremity, drawing me together with a lurch like a missed stair. He wraps bare arms around my neck, elbow-deep, and will not let me go.

I hesitate a moment over more buttons, but he only smiles against my lips and the encumbrance dissolves under my fingers. If my hands are busy, his are as well, and soon there is nothing between us, not even silence, as we fall laughing onto the bed, intertwined.

Is it funny? Of course it is, this knotty puzzle of enmeshed limbs and the absurd freedom behind our thrice-locked door. We are waves, rolling over and through one another, mingling and lost where we meet, indistinguishable.

He sinks into the pillows and I move to resume my expedition, surveyor of the only body I know better than my own. He delays me only a moment with one last ripe-mouthed kiss, not farewell, but safe journey.

What should I say of my excursion? That I recalled the way? That the terrain of heaving chest and tender belly rose up to meet me? That soft and softer skin remembered my husbandry?

There are medical words in _Leidy's Anatomy_. There are coarse words in the mouths of soldiers, and bleak words in the law. There are even lovely words among the poet's leaves. I would not fill my mouth with words.

Trembling (both). Leaping (both). Gasping (both). It's only friction, isn't it? (It isn't.)

If there is still a world, I have forgotten it. Even the blue eyes, closed now, and the panting, parted lips are distant. All creation is a mere hand's-breadth wide, and that hand mine. Writing is useless and speaking is vain; I've never been able to put things into words. This is better. Slick and salted, with pen-less fingers and wordless tongue, I fill every silence.

The word I do not say is _syncope_ : a change in rhythm, a lapse, a brief loss of consciousness. How to describe that moment, when it is not yet begun, and yet inevitable? I would not try. I would only delight in it, that sublime, sapid syncope that I have both given and taken for myself. It is mine and his and both of ours together.

Faintly, I hear his valediction: "I'm going."

I will follow in my own time. For now, I would bid him _adieu_ , sending him off with a wave, and a wave, and a cresting wave.

* * *

That night, or perhaps the next day or the next night, we lie amid rumpled bedclothes, measuring our hands one against the other. He slides his palm across mine and grins when I catch him by the wrist and kiss the ball of his thumb.

Earlier, his callouses rough against my singing flesh, I wondered how he came by them, but let the worldly thought drift away. Now, it has been a day and a night or perhaps two days and two nights, and I would know him other ways.

"Your hands are rougher than mine."

Apple-cheeked and toothy, he plants a kiss on my temple. "They always have been."

I brush this aside, derisive, but he persists: "Your hands have always been wonderfully soft."

"Have not!"

"Have too! The very first time we went fishing, I went up to Ingleside to collect you, and you were in the kitchen, helping Susan make porridge. Your hands were dusted with oatmeal and when I took one, I remember thinking that you had hands like butterfly wings."

A plosive breath escapes, but I cannot contradict him.

"Alright. Maybe my hands were soft when I was _nine_ . . ."

He is chuckling, shaking his head.

"Just as soft the summer before Queens."

Fingers dance along the sides of my face and he returns to me the very same kiss I gave him that sultry day when we tested the depths of the stream. Unmistakable.

I ask because I never have before: "What made you kiss me that first day?"

Leaning back against the headboard, he laces fingers behind the tousled nimbus of his hair and beams.

"Madness. What made you kiss me back?"

There is only one answer to that, and I give it.

"Joy."

He grins and dives at me, bearing me down into the depths of the mattress, bedclothes splashing away from us as we grapple. We are a long time reenacting that scene, embellishing it with fanciful alternate endings.

We surface, suspiring, and I open my eyes to see something merry spark in the blue depths.

"I have something for you," he breathes.

With a peck, he wriggles away and off the bed. I follow to the edge, perching watchful as I savor the sight of moon-bright skin. I have read of act-poems; he is an anthology. He stretches, the flex of shoulders and crux of elbows enjambed, flowing one into another as he searches through forgotten clothing strewn across the floor. What could I possibly want that would fit in a pocket?

Whatever it is, he has found it.

He comes to stand between my knees, nudging them apart as he closes what little distance separated us. There is a determined set to his jaw. Unashamed, he twists the top off a little circular tin and my last coherent thought is _he has thought this through._

Were his hands rough? They are slick now. Slipping, grasping, encircling, and I do not remember when I last took a breath. I try to summon enough air to ask, _are you sure_ , but can't form the thought, let alone the words.

There is no need. His hands may be occupied, but it's his gaze that holds me fast: _clear, bright, dark blue eyes fearless and direct_.* A puckish sparkle kindles there in response to the feeble, gargling sound that I meant as speech.

He answers me wordlessly with tongue-tied kisses. Our happiness is in each other's keeping, and we are unafraid.**

Toppling, we are a tangle of knees and creases and knobbly spines. He guides me through perplexities, slow and then slower. I match his breathing, slow slow slower, his hand strong in mine.

Yielding (both). Aching (both). Cleaving (both). Is that Whitman or the Bible? (It's both.)

Words are such contrary things. How can _cleave_ mean _to split_ when it also means _to adhere_? If that seemed a mystery once, it isn't any longer.

I will think on that in afterdays. Nothing so rational now. What began as uncertain ripples in a lagoon and swelled to rhythmic waves on welcoming sands now erupts into storm-roiled cliff-breakers. Crashing, plunging, _dashing reckless and dangerous_ where sensible people dare not sail. _I would be lost if it must be so_.

Some would have me spend my life in quiet conformity. Some would have me spend my life for Canada, but what is Canada to me? I would spend it here instead.

Spent, I am an edgeless puddle, bleeding into the world around me. He gathers me back together, pulls me to his own heaving shoulder, cradles me there. Ear pressed to his chest, I can hear the sea rushing in his pulse or mine or both.

We lay just like this the day before he left, in our rose-papered room at Mrs. MacDougal's. He had arrived that evening in his crisp new khaki, and I swelled with pride and longing and envy to see him so. Pleasantries to Mrs. MacDougal, then we had escaped upstairs to stow his negligible baggage. A step over the threshold and I pushed him up against the door, scrabbling with unfamiliar garments and their fastenings. He laughed, called me something unrepeatable that brought me up short, not because of my tender sensibilities, but because I had never heard the like from him before.

"I'm a soldier now," he winked. "We get to say all manner of filthy things."

How we ever made it back downstairs for supper is a mystery.

Later, in the dark of the new moon, he held me just like this, running his fingers through my hair as we lay together under Mrs. Rachel Lynde's tobacco stripe quilt. He's to have that, of course, when I die. It is tucked up with camphor in the cedar chest by my bed at home. I considered leaving a note with it, but Susan might air it out and that would never do. I've left a sealed letter for Una instead, among the papers in my foot locker. She'll see it through.

"Penny for your thoughts," he whispers.

"I was thinking about Mrs. MacDougal."

He laughs like a burbling brook. "I'm not sure which of us should be more flattered."

Feeling that my bones might be solid enough to support me again, I prop myself up beside him on the pillows. "Are you alright?"

"Quite alright."

"You're sure?"

He smirks and I search his face for hesitation or dissembling.

"You're a lot stronger than I remember," he says.

Heat prickles into my cheeks and I grope for an apology, but only manage a faint, "Sorry."

"I'm hardly complaining."

I swallow around the stone growing in my throat, but he sees my difficulty and punches me playfully in the shoulder. "You should see your face."

"I didn't mean to . . ."

Pale fingertips press my lips, silencing me.

"I am perfectly alright. Better than."

"You're sure?"

"Very."

With that, he kisses the tip of my nose and burrows into my neck, nuzzling under my ear, pressing himself to me all along the length of our bodies. He winds an arm across my breast and I pull him close in turn, the old familiar embrace.

My pulse is diminishing; his as well. Soon, the breaths rippling across my throat are shallow and even. I risk a tiny shift in position, the better to see his face; he is smiling.

As I slip toward sleep, a line rises to the surface of my muzzy brain: _There is perfection in you also_.

* * *

In the morning, he is gone.

* * *

Beyond the drapes, there is a little balcony. I sit with my knees tucked up against my chest and smoke a third cigarette, not seeing the city.

He could be anywhere. Should I go searching? One khaki needle in a teeming khaki haystack. He may even have left Paris, run back to the war early to get away from me. _Shit_.

The last time I cried, I was eleven. It was August and we were fishing the Glen Pond, as we did every summer. As we sweltered together on the landing, sharing a haversack of early apples, the mood turned confessional in a way it hadn't before, and we poured out the sort of secrets that you can't tell just anyone. He admitted that he missed his mother, that he could barely remember her, that Rosemary was lovely and kind and good, but that didn't stop him longing for the woman who had eyes like his. I confessed that I worried about having two mothers, that perhaps there was something wrong with me, deep down, because Susan meant as much to me as Mother ever had.

Neither of us noticed the viper in the form of Andy Reese hiding in the rushes, not until it was too late. I can still see that pug nose, popping out to burst our lovely bubble, and hear the mocking tone, though I don't recall the words.

What I do recall is the clear, cutting voice beside me that sent the sneak slinking away to lick wounds deeper than any I could have delivered with my fists. And when we were alone again, he took another apple and winked at me.

I didn't have words for that emotion: part gratitude, part adoration, part what I didn't yet recognize as desire. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it was enormous.

I ran away home and curled up in the window seat behind Susan's rocking chair until she came in from the garden and soothed me without knowing what was wrong. How could I tell her when I didn't know myself? She promised me undying love and showered me with jam tarts that did not fill the new hole in my heart.

The turning of a key in the lock cracks like a rifle. I swivel to see him step through the door softly, as if he would not wake me. A paper sack crackles, cradled in one arm, bulging, baguettes tilting crazily out the top. He glances toward the bed, the secret, lip-bitten smile of the prankster curving his lips.

I am on my feet, blinking hard.

"Oh! You're awake."

I only stare, heart hammering, mouth gone slack.

He holds up the groceries, smiling an apology. "I thought you must be starving."

I suppose that's one word for it.

I croak, smoke-parched. "I thought you left."

"Sorry. I only meant to let you sleep."

Perhaps something of the past hour's vigil remains etched in my face, because the soft smile is gone and he is looking at me with mounting concern. I cannot last long under this tender scrutiny. He sees that, too, and takes a towel from the washstand.

"Why don't you go take a shower?" he says, handing it to me. "Then come back and have something to eat."

I nod, unable to trust my voice.

Down the hall, there is a little washroom, blessedly unoccupied at the moment. I stand under the showerhead in the curtained tub, but it its too short, so I have to sit in the basin to cry.

I feel eleven years old again, having no name for whatever emotion is washing down the drain. Some part of it is relief, some part elation, some part an ineffable sorrow I can't pin down. Whatever it is, it is much too big, and I am grateful to let the excess overflow and swirl away with the water.

Calmer, I stand before the mirror. Judging by my stubble, this must be the third day. I scrape my cheeks and chin, drawing the razor carefully up my throat. It is something of a surprise to see a tiny flash of red carving a bright path through the shaving soap. Less of a surprise to see that the cut is just where his was that first evening. I didn't do it on purpose, but some things have their own purpose.

If this is the third day, we will both need to leave early tomorrow morning. Trains are unreliable and the war is calling. We'll still have letters, of course, but you can hardly say anything in those, not with the censors and other people always wanting to hear the news. Luckily, Rilla generally sends me some chatter that I can use to divert any letter-curious comrades. Not that there are many, and none of them last very long.

My squadron has only been in France a few weeks, but my bunkmates have been dying ever since we started training. One crashed the very first week we flew solo; two more before we left Canada. The aerodromes in England have their own cemeteries.

Now we're finally here, and the question isn't how many aerial victories you can win; it's how many you can win in a row, beginning with your very first. There isn't much room for trial and error. If your unbeaten streak stretches to five, they call you an ace. If you last six months, they call you Gramps. Every day is the last one out there.

I pull on trousers and undershirt, check the cut under my chin, clotting now. The face in the mirror seems composed.

Well, if this is the last day here, I would make it count.

Back down the hall, I knock softly, am admitted softly. He has taken a blanket from the bed and spread it on the floor, set it with split loaves spread with cheese, a clutch of pears, a bottle of wine.

"I've never had wine before," he shrugs, inspecting the bottle. "I had beer in England, and we have rum rations in the trenches, but that's practically medicinal. But when in Paris . . ."

I fold myself to the floor, our knees brushing with a _subtle electric fire_. He struggles with the cork, chipping off pieces until I take it from his hand and pop it with a corkscrew knife I won at poker from one of my dead bunkmates. I offer back the open bottle, can't help laughing at the red crescent he licks from his upper lip.

The food is miraculous. It is reassuring to realize that some of that was just ordinary hunger after all.

When we have stuffed ourselves, I lean back against the bed, memorizing him. I hardly know where to begin.

"You didn't recognize me," I say. "At the Eiffel Tower."

He brushes crumbs from the gray flannel of his shirt, wrinkles his nose. "Of course I didn't. I was looking for the kid I left back home. I wasn't expecting . . . you know . . . the shoulders and all."

My mouth is dry despite the wine, my voice quiet. "I thought that you had forgotten me."

He looks up, brows quirked, lips twitching with what might be mirth. "You thought I _forgot_ you?"

I shift my weight, squirming under his incredulity. Does he have to keep staring at me like that?

He has risen to his knees, pushing the remnants of our feast aside. Face intent, he takes both of my hands in his. Is the posture familiar? There was a spring last time, murmuring under the maples.

He waits until I meet his eyes of my own accord, then speaks reverently:

"I, Thomas Carlyle Meredith, do solemnly swear that I will never, ever forget you, Shirley John Blythe, not ever, not for one single minute, until the day I die."

The words fall from his lips and run skittering up my arms, raising every hair in a shiver that is perilously close to ecstasy.

I should repeat the oath, should swap the names, complete the ritual. But there is no set form for us, no rite but the one we write for ourselves. I could quote someone else's words, give him a line of Whitman or his own words back. But I want to give him my own, poor as they always are.

"I love you, Carl."

It is sufficient. He obviates any further covenanting with a joyful kiss, and another, and enough that counting is a fool's errand. We, who have been rivers and streams and waves together so often, are become wine, dark and rich and sweet on one another's tongues.

He is tugging at my undershirt, and I would happily oblige him, but not just yet. I put his hands away from me, just for the moment.

"I have something for you."

"I'll bet."

"No," I laugh. "An actual present."

"Oh?" he brightens. "Let's see it then."

I find my tunic crumpled in a corner and dig around in one of the hip pockets for the little pin clasped to the lining. Tiny wings rendered in gold, emblazoned _RFC_ , with the corps motto on a blue enamel ribbon: _Per Ardua Ad Astra_. Through Adversity to the Stars.

I sit down across from him, my palm gone damp, clutching the token too tightly. It's not a gift usually given from one soldier to another, this sweetheart brooch. Women display them with pride when they have a beau or a husband or a son in the flying corps. What would he ever do with it? Suddenly, it seems an absurd gift and I wish I had never spoken.

He cocks his head like a bright-eyed bird, waiting, but my mouth has gone to cotton.

"It's . . . it's stupid," I say.

"I doubt that very much."

"It's only . . . well . . . I don't mean to . . . to insult you . . . to imply . . ."

He is waving his hands vigorously, chuckling. "Hold on. Back up. From the beginning, if you please."

"The beginning?"

"Maybe start with, _What is it_?"

I unclose my fist, holding up the beetle-bright pin with its gilded wings. He blinks, goes very still.

"It's . . . well . . . it's a pin. But the trouble is that . . . well . . . most pilots give them to girls and I don't mean to imply . . . that is . . . I don't mean . . ."

There is hilarity brewing in his expression, but he takes pity on me."Let me help you," he says, taking the pin from my hand and caressing it with his thumb. "This is your very special RFC pin that shows that you are very brave and very talented and very stupid. Lots of other brave, talented, stupid men give these to their wives or to their best girls . . ."

"Sometimes to their mothers."

"Alright, well, that's not really helping, but sure. All the same, this is your pin. And you want to give it to me. But you're worried that I will be insulted by the offer because it is normally a gift given to a woman."

"That's about the size of it," I mutter.

"Why do you want me to have it?"

Whitman whispers in my ear . . . _carry me when you go forth over land or sea, for thus merely touching you is enough, is best, and thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally_ . . . but again, a quotation will not do.

I'm no poet. If I were, perhaps I would know a name for every hue of my heart, and paint him poems worth quoting. Instead, I can only offer up my few unadorned syllables and hope that he can hear what I would say if I knew how.

"Because I'm yours. Truly."

Beaming, he fastens my wings on the breast of his shirt, where women wear their brooches and heroes display their medals.

The sight jolts me with the sandpaper intrusion of the real world. "You can't . . ."

"I know," he says, and his smile falters a bit. "Just for now, though."

Just for now. Just for here. Just for us.

Is that sad? That we should have only this moment? That we must carry one another in secret and write in riddles and hold ourselves aloof when others shout _over the roofs of the world_? Perhaps. But I would save my pity for all the luckless wretches who have never seen this Paris and never will. I would not trade my place for any pale imitation whose only virtue is longevity.

Rising, I offer him my hand and pull him to his feet. My pin gleams over his heart and I can die happy now, knowing that I have said what I needed to say, words or no. With steady fingers, I hold him firmly by the chin and he returns my gaze.

Fearless (both). Equal (both). Bound (both). How can it mean _confined_ when it also means _to leap_? (I think I know.)

If we have only this hour, then let it be an _hour of fullness and freedom, one brief hour of madness and joy_.

* * *

 **Notes:**

*LMM's description of Carl Meredith in _Rainbow Valley_ , chapter 4, "The Manse Children"

** _Anne's House of Dreams_ , chapter 4, "The First Bride of Green Gables"

A note on poetry:

Shirley has absorbed _Leaves of Grass_ (especially the _Calamus_ and _Children of Adam_ sections) so thoroughly at this point that it would be impossible to footnote every time he alludes to a line of Whitman (I have used italics when he quotes directly). Some of the poems he invokes are:

"One Hour to Madness and Joy"  
"I Sing the Body Electric"  
"From Pent-Up Aching Rivers"  
"Oh You Whom I Often and Silently Come"  
"Whoever You Are Now Holding Me in Hand"  
"Among the Multitude"


	2. On Heroes

**On Heroes**

above Cambrai, France

October 1918

(Shirley)

* * *

I will die in approximately ninety seconds. My machine is a wreck, crushed by the midair collision that has already sent one Hun machine in a nose dive to oblivion. My engine's still sputtering along, but too many things are broken, rudder and wing and the propellor wobbling drunkenly. Gravity will pull me home to earth, faster and faster, until the ground opens to accept the mass of blood and bone and kinetic energy that I will impart to it. There will be another pockmark in the mud and I will be gone from all this.

I suppose I should be afraid. After all, I am only ninety seconds — or eighty seconds, rather — from finding out which of us was right about hell. But no, there is no lurch of panic, no heavy breathing or gritted teeth. Instead, I feel unaccountably light, like a billowing sail on the high sea of heaven. Plummeting, I am weightless.

There's an emotion there, for sure, and I feel around for its name. Certainly not dread. Not even resignation. I'm pretty sure it's _relief_.

* * *

An hour ago, we went out hunting over the lines. Streamers flying from my rudder and wings marked me as the leader, though there were only three aeroplanes in my flight. Fly light, fly fast. We soared high and higher, where the thin air is too cold and poor to breathe. That's our advantage: our S.E.5as can fly higher than any Hun machine, so we circle above and dive down on them like osprey fishing the shallows.

We were lucky, at first. I spotted a lone triplane, limping home from some other fight, and waggled my wings to tell Corcoran and Russell that we'd all go in together. I could have shot him down myself on the first pass, but better to give Russell the chance to build his confidence. I dove at the German, turning him directly into Russell's merciless burst. That made four victories for Russell. One more and I'd have to buy him a drink.

We climbed again to altitude with plenty of fuel and ammo. Far below, the trenches of Picardy were not scars so much as stitched wounds, jagged and black, with the sutures sticking out at unnatural angles. As if the doctor had done his best, but really, a wound like that was never going to heal cleanly and you couldn't expect much.

It was a quiet patrol. We crisscrossed the lines, back and forth, until my fuel gauge dipped below half and I began to think of turning for home. Better to return to the aerodrome, rest, try again tomorrow, than to get caught in a fight with no reserves.

Just then, movement below caught my eye and for a wild moment I thought it was a skein of geese, dark specks moving against the direction of the wind. The German Jastas have taken to flying in huge formations, fifteen or twenty or more all together. There's nothing we can do against those odds, so we hide out in the ether where even the Fokker D VIIs can't catch us. But these Huns are in pursuit of something, another RAF flight: four machines, maybe a bomber and its escort. They're too far away for me to hear their guns over my own engine, but they're peeling off now and spraying tracers, dipping and wheeling around and past one another.

They'll never see us coming.

Another wing-waggle and Corcoran and Russell follow me toward the fray, coming in from above and oblique. In a fight, you can't see anything but what's in front of you. Certainly not unexpected reinforcements dropping down from the heavens.

Screaming down in a nearly vertical dive. Rushing wind, a few stray tracers, bursts of machine gun fire near enough now. Pick a target. A Fokker chasing that two-seater round and round in circles; his mind will be occupied. I fall in behind and when the two-seater banks, I burst and burst and and burst again and am rewarded with streamers of black smoke. The Hun lurches, then begins to sag downward and soon he is in freefall, spinning. I'd follow him down to be sure — they do fake injuries by diving sometimes — but that smoke is pretty nasty looking and there's other work to do here.

If he stays down, he's my thirty-third kill.

Not that I've only killed thirty-three men, of course. I've shot down some two-seaters and an observation balloon, though the balloon boys have parachutes, lucky bastards, and may have gotten out with their skins intact. There are also the strafing runs, though those don't count. There's no glory in watching infantrymen cower, scurrying for shelter like rats as I murder them. The RAF only counts the other airmen, as if we are the only ones who matter.

* * *

Ten months ago, in Paris, December dawned in pale gray streaks that crept around the edges of the drapes. I counted his breaths as he slumbered, serene in the curve of my arm. Perhaps it was not dawn after all, but merely the reflection of the moon.

When we could delay no longer, I kissed him awake and watched grim recollection chase away the initial flash of joy that lit his eyes. I folded him close, faces buried in one another's shoulders as we stole a few more heartbeats.

We dressed one another from the skin out. Drawers, undershirts, socks, shirts, trousers, tunics, belts, boots. He worked my buttons without ever looking away from my face. When I had finished wrapping his puttees, he offered me the cord with his identity discs so that I might slip them back around his neck. Two tags, stamped with his regimental number and TC MEREDITH PRES CDN. The red circle is detachable, for reporting a casualty to battalion headquarters; the green octagon stays with the body.

I declined.

Instead, I warmed the gold enameled wings between my palms and pinned them to the inside of his breast pocket.

"That's good," he said. "I won't worry about losing it if the clasp comes undone."

"Good," I answered. "I don't want you to worry."

* * *

Two minutes ago, I turned back toward the swooping D VIIs as number thirty-three fell away, and saw immediately that one of our S.E.5as was in trouble. Maybe Russell, maybe Corcoran, maybe one from the other flight, who knows. But he had two Huns on his tail and they had him dead to rights.

Aerial combat is a geometry problem. Fixed points; oblique planes; accounting for the way gravity distorts speed in the climb and in the dive. Two opposing machines can chase one another round and round until their fuel runs out and never get in one another's range, but two against one and all the attackers have to do is assign one to hold you down while the other punches.

Full throttle, aiming not where they were but where I hoped they would be soon, I streaked across open air and came in from below, firing into the Huns' bellies. A good shot, a very good, and flames erupted from one of the fuel tanks. A terrific ball of fire tore a black, glowing hole in number thirty-four.

But I miscalculated. Flew too close. That Fokker, hit and flailing, tumbling at me, coming fast. Not shooting; smashing. I threw my machine hard over, but no use; a horrible, bone-jarring crunch and his burning wings flaked all around me. Acrid smoke seared my throat, his or mine, no way to tell. A piece of flaming wreckage plastered against my windshield, black and orange and alive with macabre delight. The Fokker burning, falling, tumbling end over end, and out of sight because I was also spinning and couldn't seem to pull out of it.

* * *

Four years ago, we sat together in the study at the manse on a rainy Saturday, home from Queen's and from Harbour Head, with a roaring fire in the grate and the whole house deserted. We lounged either end of the old plush sofa, with our feet tucked up together in the middle, calves and knees mingled as we read in contented silence.

He sighed over the top of his book and I asked what he was reading.

"Thomas Carlyle. _On Heroes_."

"For school?"

"I was just curious."

"The name?"

"Well, obviously it means something to Father," he said, shutting the cover. "I thought I should find out if it means something to me, too."

"And?"

He turned to an early page and read, " _The history of the world is but the biography of Great Men_."

I grimaced. "Great men? Like who?"

He chewed his lip, mumbled, "Like Dante."*

"Dante? Like Dante's _Inferno_?"

"The very same."

"Never read it," I said, hoping that would be the end.

He pulled his feet back, leaving cold patches where they had rested on my thighs. Padding over to the bookcase, he searched among volumes shoved higgledy-piggledy and sideways among the ruins of once-neat rows. It took a few minutes, but he found what he was looking for.

"It's a tour of hell," he said, riffling the pages. "Nine circles, each for a different type of sin."

"You don't have to read that," I said, sitting up, wary.

He waved me off and turned the pages purposefully. Finding what he wanted, he spoke quietly, but with grim determination. "Here it is. The Seventh Circle. The Circle of the Violent."

I might have laughed if there had been any lightness to him. Instead, he was sodden, as dreary as the gray rain rippling down the windowpanes. "Carl. Stop. The Violent? You can't even swat a mosquito."

"No," he whispered. "That would be Violence Against Our Neighbors, for warmongers and murderers. There's also Violence Against Ourselves for suicides and dissolutes . . ."

"Carl . . ."

"No, that's not me either. I'm the last: Violence Against God." He cleared his throat and read,

" _Violence can be done the Deity . . .  
_ _By disdaining Nature and her bounty.  
_ _And for this reason doth the smallest round  
_ _Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors,  
_ _All those who hate God with all their hearts . . ._ "**

"Stop."

"Don't you want to hear the punishment?" he asked, voice cracking. " _O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, were raining down dilated flakes of fire_ . . ."

"Stop it." I was impatient and he looked up sharply at my sharper tone. I wanted to snatch the volume from his hand and feed it to the flames. Let hell keep its own. "It's just a poem, Carl," I said. "It's not even the Bible. It's just a poem. It isn't real."

"Just a poem?" he said, nodding toward the green-bound Whitman in my own lap. "What's all that then, other than poems?"

I spread my hands protectively over the open pages of _Leaves of Grass_ , that companion that _had been working a revolution within me_ since the first hour I spent _poring, pausing, wondering, knowing that I intended to go on reading it_.*** I didn't have it memorized, not yet, but I found that I had begun to think in its cadences.

The dark blue eyes, observant as ever, did not miss the meaning in my gesture. "I'm sure I've heard your mother say that poems are true, even if they aren't true in the same way as prose. Or maybe that was Walter."

Fair enough. That sounded like them, in any case. But I wasn't about to let this Seventh Circle business stand unchallenged.

"If that's true, then so is this," I said, thumbing through the Whitman until I found the eschatology that spoke to me as no sermon ever had:

 _I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,  
_ _But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.  
_ _There was never any more inception than there is now,  
_ _Nor any more youth or age than there is now,  
_ _And will never be any more perfection than there is now,  
_ _Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.****_

The words rang through me, resonating at a frequency that I knew as my own. This was it exactly: the present moment paramount, the reality and divinity of here and now.

"It's just a poem," he whispered. "It's not even the Bible. It isn't real."

"It _is_ real," I flared.

I thought he might cry, but perhaps it was only firelight twitching across his face. "Which one?"

* * *

I will die in approximately seventy seconds. No help for it. Whatever that collision did, my machine is in tatters. Rudder bar useless, stick leaden. I heave and heave and manage to straighten out a little so that I'm falling at an angle, rather than straight down. Not spinning anymore, that's good. But I don't know what it does except maybe reset my clock back to eighty.

I'm definitely dying and no mistake. To be perfectly honest, this is better than I was expecting. I don't seem to be on fire. The wind has blown away the charred debris and left no lingering flames. That's good. We all hate the thought of burning to death and it looks like I will be spared that, at least.

There's also the good news from my last batch of letters: Jem alive and in Holland. Better and better. It's been something of a wrench these past few months, thinking that Mother and Dad would have to lose all three of us. But Jem's alive and it's a miracle and I'm glad for all of them. They'll get to keep him now and carry on the Blythe line. Thank God that bit never fell to me. There will be a next generation and they'll hear a good story about me, how I fought bravely and died well, like Walter, and never did anything to bring dishonor on the family name.

Sixty seconds. The news of Jem wasn't my only recent mail. Dante has come slinking back into Kit's letters. _Flakes of fire_. That's how he described his dreams, what he sees now, with his lost eye. I had hoped that we were done with all that, but it's bred too close to the bone in him. I would have him forget that hell, and every hell: the burning barn and the endless mud and the Violence Against God. God damn Dante. What made him an expert on hell, anyway?

Well, Kit will be able to put all that aside now. Without me around, there will be no more sneaking, no more worrying, no more fear of prison or lashes or hellfire. I can picture him without all that. Wading in the brook at home, sunlight in his hair, smiling in the green, soft, glad, safe valley. How long does he have? Fifty years at least. Maybe more! Not troubled, furtive, hidden years, either. This is better. Fifty years or more of tranquility, and his hope of heaven after.

Myself, I have about fifty seconds. I wonder whether he will marry. He can, now that I'm gone. I can see him teaching a little boy all the secrets of bugs and birds, the blue eyes restored in his son. I suppose that implies a wife. Well, he'll do right by her, whoever she is. They will make a home, keep a garden, read together on a sofa, and never, ever Dante. He will kiss her with lips at once softer and more determined than you would expect, with a smile always tucked away somewhere, ready to spring out at the lightest touch, buoyant.

Forty seconds and perhaps the rapid drop is finally getting to me because now I can feel the plummet in my stomach. I'll never see him again. He will live and live and live and I'll never hear him laugh or catch the scent of sweet flag off his clothes or feel his fingers twined through my hair, holding me fast while he urges me on.

Never? That can't be right. It's not the drop turning my guts to water now, but a rush of elemental terror. _Never?_

But what can I do about it? I'll be dead in thirty seconds. I pass over our lines, the trenches no longer sutures in the earth, but great muddy gashes not so very far below. I kick the bar below my boots, but I've got nothing from the rudder. One wing is in tatters. I haul on the stick, haul again, put everything I've got into it and gain a few more degrees, but not enough.

Come on. Really pull. So what if breaks off? There's nothing to lose now. I wrench, I yank, something slips, and slips again, and the stick is more responsive now. A bit. Am I doing it? Am I leveling off? Yes. Somewhat. Little good it will do me now, I'm still going to plow a new crater in the ground in twenty seconds. The machine itself will crush me, send its guts smashing through mine, go up in a fireball and burn me to a crisp in my harness.

Unless . . .

Unless I'm not in the plane when it goes in.

No time to examine that reckless thought.

Ten, I throw off my harness.

Nine, haul myself out of the cockpit.

Eight, plant my feet on the starboard wing.

Seven, grasp a cabane strut.

Six, lean in against the lashing wind.

Five, stand tall as I hurtle toward destruction.

Four, right here in this field.

Three, and it's now or never.

Two, and _I'm sorry, Kit_.

One . . . and I step off into open air.

* * *

"Is that him? The crazy son of a bitch who _jumped_?"*****

"Sure is. Flight Commander Blythe."

"Blythe? Lucky, more like. The devil's own."

I crack an eye to see two men standing over me. If this is hell, it smells of carbolic acid, not brimstone.

"You're awake!" says the shorter man. A doctor. He has darkish hair, but the light hurts my eyes and I can't get a good look at him through my squint.

"Awake?" I struggle to sit up.

"Don't trouble yourself, Blythe, don't trouble yourself. You had quite the crack-up there. Everyone's talking about it."

As he speaks, I take inventory. Heart: beating. Lungs: breathing. Though, _ah_ , a sharp pain there. Arms: two. Hands: two. Legs and feet under a blanket but apparently whole. Head: _splitting_.

"Your commanding officer was here earlier. He said you'll have the Distinguished Flying Cross for this."

Another sharp pain for another breath. "Did he say . . . _ah_ . . . what happened to the rest of my flight? Corcoran? And Russell?"

"Well, I don't know about that," the short doctor says amiably. "Perhaps we can find out. But I do know that you're very lucky, son. Couple of broken ribs. Some truly magnificent bruising. And I'm sure you've noticed the knock to the head."

Sledgehammer to the head.

"I'll . . . live?"

The shorter doctor laughs a piercing laugh that lacerates my brain and makes me see stars. "Goodness, yes. You just rest up a bit and you'll be good as new. I'm afraid they won't even send you home for this."

Home?

"They didn't . . . didn't send my parents a telegram, did they?"

"For some bruises and cracked ribs? Son, if the RAF sent a telegram every time a pilot got banged up in a landing, they'd do nothing else all the live long day."

Live . . . long . . .

Panic breaks over me and I startle, jarring my ribs so that I wince and gasp.

I'm not dead. I was supposed to die. And now . . .

Kit. He was supposed to have safety and heaven and a blue-eyed son. Am I so selfish that I would rather see him damned than give him up? What have I done?

The tall doctor is speaking now. "The ambulance driver who brought you in said it was the damnedest thing he ever saw. You crashed in full view of a battalion that had just come off the line. They say you stood up on the wing of the plane bold as Lucifer and jumped just before the crash. You rolled ass over teakettle and stood up under your own power before you passed out. Hell of a thing. The ambulance men said the entire battalion cheered the whole time they were loading you in. Bloody hero."

"I don't remember any of that," I murmur.

"That's alright," says the short doctor. "You're safe now, and no need to worry."

* * *

*Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a Scottish philosopher whose most famous work is a compilation of his lectures called, _On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History_ (1841). One of the lectures is called "The Hero as Poet," taking Dante and Shakespeare as its examples. Carl Meredith is named for Thomas Carlyle (John Knox Meredith is named for Scottish theologian John Knox).

As readers of "The Sun and the Other Stars" will no doubt remember, there is considerable danger in reading only the beginning of _The Divine Comedy_. Dante's work is not just _Inferno_ ; it is _Inferno_ , _Purgatory_ , and _Paradise_.

**Longfellow's translation, with a slight modern clarification on the last line from the translation by Douglas Neff.

***The English poet, utopian socialist, and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was 25 when a friend handed him a book of Whitman's poems. In his autobiography, _My Days and Dreams_ , Carpenter marks that day as a turning point in his life, saying, "I remember lying down then and there on the floor and for half an hour poring, pausing, wondering. I could not make the book out, but I knew at the end of that time that I intended to go on reading it . . . From that time forward a profound change set in within me. I remember the long and beautiful summer nights, sometimes in the College garden by the riverside, sometimes sitting at my own window which itself overlooked a little old-fashioned garden enclosed by grey and crumbling walls; sometimes watching the silent and untroubled dawn; and feeling all the time that my life deep down was flowing out and away from the surroundings and traditions amid which I lived — a current of sympathy carrying it westward, across the Atlantic. I wrote to Whitman, obtained his books from him, and occasional postcardial responses. But outwardly, and on the surface, my life went on as usual." Elsewhere in the same work: "[Whitman's] writings had been my companions, and had been working a revolution within me." These passages interest me not only because they are among the many testimonies of what Whitman meant to queer people living in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but because of their consideration of the tension between an internal experience and outward appearances.

****Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

*****Shirley's crash is based on the crash of New Zealand RAF pilot Keith Caldwell in September of 1918 near Cambrai. Caldwell suffered a midair collision in his S.E.5a, climbed onto the wing, and jumped clear at the last moment. He was not substantially injured and was back in combat in October. He survived the war and served in WWII, eventually commanding the RNZAF. There are a few other accounts of RAF pilots landing while standing on their wings in dire circumstances, including Canadian RAF pilot Alan McLeod.

RAF (and other Allied) aircrew were not issued parachutes during WWI, though balloon crews usually were. German aircrews got parachutes at the very end of the war.

One stupid note: the Doc Manager will not allow me to type the name of the German aircraft being used in this battle. Its proper name is D . VII with no spaces, but any time I put the period in, the Doc Manager deletes it, so I just went with D VII, which is apparently acceptable to the gremlins.


	3. Prayers of Thanksgiving

**Prayers of Thanksgiving**

* * *

September 1918

Westcliffe Eye and Ear Hospital, Folkestone, Kent, England

(Dispatches, Chapter 42: "By Any Name")

(Carl)

* * *

There aren't any pockets in convalescent blues. I don't really know why not. I asked Sister Graeme once and she said that it made them easier to wash, and I guess she'd know, but still, that hardly seems enough of a reason to make us go without.

It would be a great comfort to have just a little breast pocket, that's for sure. But after I asked, Sister Graeme made me a little muslin pouch that I wear around my neck, under my shirt, and that serves well enough.

Other than the lack of pockets, I don't mind the convalescent blues so much. Sister Graeme says they bring out the color of my eye. Mine are a bit too large and make me feel like a child in Jerry's unhemmed hand-me-downs, with the sleeves falling down halfway to my knuckles. Not that I mind! I'd wear a potato sack if it meant I didn't have to go back to the trenches. Well, no danger of that now. I'm grateful.

In fact, I'd say I actually like the blues. I suppose I could stay in pajamas all the time, but I like to get dressed and sit by the window in the afternoons, just because I can. I haven't needed complete bed rest since my first week at Westcliffe, when my face was still so swollen I could hardly eat and my head too heavy to lift. I still get headaches, of course, but not as many, and the doctors say there don't seem to be any lasting effects from the concussion. That's a relief.

Sister Graeme says I'm very lucky; the fragment that hit me must have ricocheted elsewhere and already spent much of its speed. She's not wrong. If it had been a more direct hit, I'd have lost half my skull, not just the eye. But I was lucky. Sister Graeme says that the scars are forming nicely and that I'll only need the bandages another week or two. After that, I can have an eyepatch if I want one. It will take some getting used to, but _one eye is enough to watch bugs with_.

The ward door clicks open and it's Corporal Lewiston with our mail. He's a friendly fellow, ginger-haired and chatty, but it is difficult to return his pleasantries when my guts are suddenly writhing with eels. There's usually something for me at mail call — Una and Rosemary see to that — and I hate to feel disappointed when my mail is only Glen news, because I appreciate every line they write me, really I do. But . . .

Corporal Lewiston spots me by the sunny window and hails me with a fistful of envelopes.

"Hiya, Meredith!" he grins. "Quite a few for you today."

I would chat, but I've spotted the red triangle on the top envelope under his thumb, the bright stamp that says "Passed by Censor" and is only affixed to military post. It's all I can do to keep myself leaping from my chair and snatching it from him. Luckily, Lewiston has other places to be, and leaves me to my letters.

I could tear open the envelope at once, like an overeager pup clawing for a scented treat, but no. The proper ceremonies must be observed. His own handwriting on the envelope: he is alive. _Thank you, God_. The postmark, August 27: he received my last letter and responded within a day or two. _Thank you, God_. The red triangle: whatever is in here got past censor #2236. _Thank you, God_.

I close my eye in gratitude, and savor this exquisite feeling of calm. Sometimes it feels as if I live from one of these moments to the next, this blissful interlude between receiving his letter and reading it, holding it safe and real in my hand, with the pleasure of opening it still ahead of me. I delay, delight, weighing it in my palm, tracing the edges with my fingertip, reading my own name in his hand.

I still remember the first letter he ever wrote me. Not even a letter, really, more of a note. It was my first day teaching at Harbour Head, and I stood in the empty schoolhouse at dawn, just staring at the bare desks. At that moment, I wasn't even praying that I would be a good teacher, I was just praying that I wouldn't do any irrevocable damage to the minds so absurdly entrusted to me. I pulled my testament from my satchel and right away I saw a bit of paper sticking out from between the pages. Precise black letters, clear and upright: _You'll be brilliant. Tell me all about it on Saturday?_

I knew his handwriting, of course. How many school assignments had we worked over together in the Ingleside garret or resting our backs up against the dike of the Methodist graveyard? How many of his essays had I proofread at Queen's while he shook his head patiently over my geometry proofs? But he hadn't written to me before. Why should he? We were so seldom apart.

No, that's not exactly right. We were apart my first year at Queen's, or it felt that way, even if we did see one another on weekends. We were only friends then, the year before swimming and kisses, but I was already doing my best not to think of him half as much as I did. It wasn't right. I shouldn't have been imagining him, not the way I did. I tried not to. I tried to focus on my studies and drank a lot of cold water and slept with my hands on top of the blankets. Nothing helped much.

I put that first note in my breast pocket and carried it there all week. It was a long week, meeting my scholars and taming my classroom and discovering how few ideals could survive their encounter with practical reality. But I don't think I told him much about all that on Saturday. At least it isn't the talking I remember.

Wait, that isn't quite true. I do remember that he called me "Mr. Meredith" once and I shoved him into the pond. I could still do that then, when he was only fifteen and slender as a reed. He rose out of the water drenched and laughing; that is one of the pictures I carried with me to Flanders.

"Anything in your letters, Carl?"

Sister Graeme smiles sweetly over the tea tray in her hands. She shouldn't be bringing me tea, there are orderlies for that, but perhaps there had been an orderly and I had been too far away to notice. Sister Graeme sets the tray on the deep windowsill and leans against it for a moment, awaiting my answer.

"I haven't opened them yet," I say truthfully.

"Quite a few today," she says, nodding under her crisp, white veil.

I survey the small stack of letters I have not even bothered to examine yet. "Yes," I smile. "My family will have gotten the letter I sent when I arrived here, I suppose."

"You're lucky to have so many people who care about you."

"I know. I am."

I think Sister Graeme is one of them. She always has a kind word for me, and I wonder whether she might have a younger brother or perhaps even a son somewhere at the front.

"I'll let you get back to them," she says, patting me on the shoulder. "But don't neglect your tea. And there's some stale bread on your tray, as well."

"Thank you, Sister."

When she leaves, I slide my finger under the envelope flap and ease it open. Just one sheet, as always. _Dear Kit_ . . .

That's as far as I've gotten and I'm already chasing after breath. A new name. An endearment. Coming from him, that's a lot. I read the salutation over several times, savoring it, imagining how it might sound spoken aloud or murmured not loud at all. _Kit_. _Dear Kit_. I feel for the pouch around my neck and read on.

 _I was very sorry to hear about your eye. But as sorry as I am over it, I am ten times gladder that you are out of the trenches and headed for home. I can't take down every German plane in the sky, though I am trying._

 _I was thinking that it will be your birthday again soon enough. Happy birthday, in case I don't get a chance to tell you. When things are grim here, I sometimes thing of your birthday in the Glen, and how Rilla springing out of the dark frightened me worse than any Fokker flying out of the sun ever has. It was worth it, though._

It certainly was. I push away the tormenting lines about chances and Fokkers and his deadly work. Closing my eye, that birthday comes flooding back, the memory washing away worry in a torrent.

* * *

The night I turned seventeen was silver-bright, a shiver of autumn in the breeze off the harbor.

"Where are we going?" I asked as he led me away from our usual hideout among the reeds.

He took my hand and grinned. "On a moon-spree, of course."*

I had told him once that the harvest moon always felt like mine. I was only five when Mother died, but I remember the story of my birth in her voice, how the bronze harvest moon watched over us, marking a season for storing up riches against the winter.** The year after she died, I looked to the gibbous moon on my birthday and could see only the sliver it lacked.

But it was at the apex of its fullness that night, lighting our way wherever it was we were going. Out from under the sheltering shadows of the valley, we dropped our linked hands and I followed half a step behind as he led me past the Four Winds light and to the rock shore beyond. I thought it was plenty far enough, but he picked his way over scree slopes and driftwood logs and I followed gamely not because I loved the chilly salt spray or the slick stones under my feet, but because I would have followed him anywhere.

When I had finally made up my mind to complain that really, did we have to spend all night hiking, he turned abruptly, seeming to disappear into the cliff face. I followed again, finding there a shallow cleft in the rock, tapering from an upper point to a pebbled floor just wide enough for two. I took my place beside him and unwrapped the parcel he produced from his haversack.

"It's a cake," I said, as if the scent of nutmeg and buttercrumb topping had not announced itself.

"I baked it," he said simply. "Happy birthday."

" _You_ baked it?" I asked, though he managed to surprise me often enough that I should not have been surprised.

He blinked back with that maddening expression of imperturbable calm layered over a secret laugh.

"I bake very well," he replied, as if every self-respecting halfback at Queen's had a flair for pastry.

"I'll be the judge of that," I grinned, cutting a fragrant slice.

He did, in fact, bake very well.

Later, his mouth cinnamon-warm around me, I joked that baking was the least of his secret talents.

"Not talent," he smirked, pausing to look up at me. "Practice."

I was fairly certain he was wrong about that, but having neither sufficient experience nor sufficient breath to contradict him, I did not press the point. Aptitude or training hardly mattered as long as he didn't stop.

As the harvest moon slipped low over the sea, we leaned against the rock face, hands entwined. It is one of the moments I can still see perfectly when I close my eye, my moon laying out a luminous path to heaven and his spice cake reduced to crumbs and our feet stretched out before us, pointed off across the water toward some unknown shore.

"Do you think the war will last a whole year?" he asked.

I could only answer truthfully. "I don't know."

I squeezed his hand and said a prayer of gratitude that he was only fifteen and safe, no matter what the next harvest moon might bring.

* * *

"Any birds today, Meredith?"

I fold the unfinished letter and smile at Will Foster even though he can't see me. Gas-blind, the upper half of his face swathed in bandages under his cornsilk hair. His bed is beside the window and he likes to hear how the starlings are getting along.

"I'm just putting out the bread now." I narrate for his benefit, keeping my voice low so I don't startle the birds. "The kitchen must think I'm mad, asking for stale rusks. I'm opening the window. It's a bit cloudy today, but I don't think it will rain. The elm is starting to turn. The top leaves are going yellow and gold, but the underparts are still green. Oh, here she is! It's Two-Toed Sally first to the sill again. She's lovely and fat, all iridescent blues and greens and purples over her speckles. Do you have starlings in Toronto, Foster?"

"I'm not sure. I never noticed."

"They're not a native species, you know," I say, admiring the velvet midnight of Sally's plumage. "In Canada, I mean. Some daft Yank wanted to bring every bird mentioned by Shakespeare to North America. He released them all in Central Park in New York. Most of them died, but the starlings loved it and now they're a menace. They steal nests from native songbirds and eat up everything in sight."***

"What a senseless thing," Foster mused. He'd heard enough of my ramblings on the evils of invasive species to have a grudge against them himself, even if he'd never known an osprey from a oyster before. "It doesn't seem right that one man's whim should throw everything out of balance."

"No," I say, studying bright-eyed Sally as she pecks at the bread. "They're beautiful, though, these starlings. In their right place. I never saw one before I came here, except in pictures. And those don't capture them well. Pictures say they're black, but they're every color when the light hits them right."

"You don't have starlings on your Island?"

"We didn't," I reply. "Not when I was a kid, anyway. But I expect they'll have invaded the Glen by the time I get back."

"No keeping them out, is there?"

"No."

Two other, smaller birds have come to join bold Sally, pecking at the stale crumbs on the sill. One tips its glossy head in my direction, but hops away nervously when I extend a hand. The starlings are gorgeous, but they aren't as brave as our little chickadees at home, who will take peanuts and sunflower seeds from my hand, clutching my fingertips with tiny claws, the vibration of their wings humming as they entrust themselves to my benevolence.

"You have letters?" Foster asks.

"A pile of 'em," I say, sorting through the others for the first time. "Must have been a ship in from Kingsport. There's one from my father and Rosemary, one from Una of course, and our friend Mrs. Blythe, and one from Bruce . . ."

"Oh, read Bruce first!" Foster grins. "I don't suppose he'll offer any more delightfully honest descriptions of visiting ministers, will he?"

"Only one way to find out," I smile, slitting Bruce's ink-splotched envelope.

* * *

When the Glen news has lulled Foster into his afternoon nap, I shuffle back to the letter I didn't read aloud.

 _Are you really alright?_ he asks. _You know you can tell me._

Can I? I hardly know what to say. That the birds here are strange, skittish things? That I'm grateful for Sister Graeme and Will Foster and letters from home, but that I miss him like a tide-stranded fish misses the sea? That every time I try to sleep I find myself pinned again under the crushing weight of that burning barn with Sergeant Donovan screaming just beyond my fingertips and flakes of fire raining down around me?

I could tell him that, though he hates it when I mention hell. Not because he fears it, but because I do. He never seems to fear anything. Not prison. Not hell. Not even hurtling through the heavens in a skiff of matchsticks and canvas strapped to a controlled explosion. How many times have I envied his unwavering confidence in his own sufficiency, his gift for being where he is and nowhere else? Unflappable.

At least, that's how I always thought of him. How else to explain the mastiff and his disregard for Section 202 and the calm in his kiss that long-ago summer? I thought he must never worry about anything.

I saw my mistake in Paris, the moment I stepped through the door with my bread and cheese and pears to find him undone. I had never seen him cry. Never. Had anyone? Maybe Susan, when he was small. But he stood before me agape, wreathed in cigarette smoke, his face as fragile as a blown eggshell.

Later, when he had showered and we had eaten, I wanted to explain what he had so clearly misunderstood. How could I make him understand that in giving himself to me, he had also given me back to myself? After two years of filth and terror, imagining myself anywhere but where I was, he had made me glad to inhabit my own body again. I had never believed his Whitman that the soul is the body and the body is the soul, but he might convert me yet.

But he had spoken first, and for all his philosophy, the fear he named seemed so simple, so childlike, that I swelled with an incongruous sort of affection, the same as I had felt for the little tabby kitten he had saved so long ago. _Kit_. If he likes. But I know him and could mirror the name back.

The vow I gave him was sincere. _I will never forget you_. I had not known it needed to be spoken. It seemed impossible that he did not already know how constantly he filled my thoughts, that he was first in every prayer, foremost in every hope.

I suppose that's hypocritical. Surely I did not need to hear him say _I love you_ to know it. Hadn't he told me a hundred ways already? Still, my heart leapt at his words and the scant inches between us were too much to bear. I would have crawled inside him if I could have, and been absorbed rather than parted.

We had only a day and a night after that, but I have lived in that day every since. He held my chin, our eyes locked fast, and for once we did not laugh. It was a fiercer joy that sealed those vows. Brimming with wine and wonder, I gave him back touch for touch what he had given me and found that somehow our debts only accumulated.

Just thinking it, my flesh begins to wake and I am suddenly aware of every touch. The convalescent blues falling over-long and rubbing the backs of my hands, the bandages snug over my forehead, the point of a tiny wing pricking my chest through the muslin pouch.

It's a risk, but Sister Graeme is elsewhere and everyone else on this ward is blind. I pull the little bag from beneath my shirt, silently tipping his wings into my hand, squeezing gently enough that they do not break, firmly enough that they leave their impression in my palm.

 _Are you really alright? You know you can tell me. I would rather know plainly how things are with you than get a cheerful letter unless you really mean it. You don't have to write about it. But you can._

I wish he were here, or that we were at home together, or in Paris. Then I could tell him or not tell him, but he would know how things are with me either way. There are rumors that the war will be over soon, with the Huns demoralized and depleted and the Yanks fresh and fit and howling at their door. Maybe it's true this time. We couldn't be home in time for my birthday, but maybe we could make it in time for his. He'll be twenty.

Until then, he has asked for the truth. I'll give it as best I can at this distance. Rummaging in the drawer of my bedside table, I find paper, ink, envelope, and set up in the windowsill beside the ruin of Two-Toed Sally's crumbs. I rub the brooch under my thumb, imagining that perhaps he can feel it, wherever he is.

 _Dear Shirley,  
_ _Be assured that I don't need to be reminded of the night Rilla scared you — it is one of my fondest memories and I have revisited it often these past four years. I can only hope we'll both be home in time to celebrate your birthday next spring . . ._

I write of the hospital, the starlings, and Cricket left behind in France. It would be hard to explain about Cricket. About how it was very hard to be alone after Paris and that the tiny comfort of a warm little body in my pocket helped a bit. I leave that part out, along with my disappointment that the starlings refuse to touch me. It would be hard to explain, even to him. But I do put in the dreams and how hard it is to distinguish between the barn fire and Dante's inferno. He did ask for the truth.

When the letter is finished, I double-check my acrostic. BY ANY NAME. _Thomas_ , _Carl_ , _Kit_ , what does it matter? I'll answer to anything as long as he's the one calling.

"Still up, Carl?" Sister Graeme asks over my shoulder. "You really do need to let yourself rest."

Her words are too gentle to be a scolding and the truth is that I truly am tired.

I give her a genuine smile. "I'll go back to bed in a minute, Sister. I just wanted to finish writing this letter."

"Which you have done, evidently. Why don't you address the envelope and I'll see it's posted for you. Then you can get back in bed."

"Thank you, Sister."

I do as she says, then check to see that her back is turned. It takes only a moment to press a kiss to the unsealed flap.

Later, under the covers, I wonder whether writing of the dreams will banish them. Perhaps it will just make them bolder. But I must try to sleep in either case. I cuddle the muslin pouch to my chest and say my prayers, repeating them until I fall asleep:

 _Merciful God, please protect Shirley and hold him always in the palm of your hand.  
_ _Look down on all of us, especially the 87_ _th_ _and all the other boys still out on the line.  
_ _Please protect Jem, wherever he is, and comfort Faith.  
_ _Merciful God, please watch over all my family. Please guide Una and let her feel your love always. Please encourage Father in his ministry, and protect Jerry and Bruce and Rosemary. Please comfort all the Blythes and give them strength. Please bring Jem home to them.  
_ _Please bless Sister Graeme and all the medical staff here at Westcliffe and shepherd them in their work. Please guard Will Foster and all the other wounded men and let them recover as best they can.  
_ _Thank you for all your mercies toward me. Thank you for my life and the love of my family. Thank you for sending me home.  
_ _Thank you for Shirley. Please let him come home to me._

* * *

* _Rilla of Ingleside_ , Chapter 17

**Carl's birthday is October 3. The harvest moon on the night of October 3/4, 1914 was the first one to fall on his birthday since it fell on October 4, 1897.

***In 1890, a New Yorker named Eugene Schieffelin implemented his strange scheme to import every species of bird mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to Central Park. The initial population of 60 starlings thrived beyond anyone's expectations and soon became a massively destructive invasive species, colonizing most of the North American continent.


	4. Brigade Brothers

_Special thanks to kslchen for translation assistance and to MrsVonTrapp for jump-starting this when it seemed irrevocably stalled._

* * *

 **Brigade Brothers**

* * *

September 1918

(Jem)

* * *

"Come on, Blythe. Just a little farther. Gotta keep moving."

I open my eyes, and there's Sam, panting. He's half-carried me these last two miles, wading in the current of a shallow stream, hoping to disguise our trail. He even left me in the water once, leaning heavily on my walking stick while he dashed off to make a little diversionary path, then backtracked. Maybe the dogs will take the bait and waste an hour scouring the forest for us. Maybe not.

It doesn't matter. We've reached the river now, dark and rushing under a quarter moon. There's no way I can swim it. My leg is on fire from hip to knee, with bolts shooting up into my abdomen and scorching to the very tips of my toes. Useless. My left hand is no better, hanging inert at my side, clawed and stiff.

Last time, when they caught us, a soldier with hobnailed boots had lain my hand out flat against a rock and stepped on it, grinding his foot back and forth and back and forth until all the metacarpals popped one by one. When he released me, it was a ruin of splintered bone and macerated flesh, twitching as it dangled from my wrist. I spent my first week in solitary confinement setting a bones, fainting, setting another. No anesthesia, so I recited from _Leidy's Anatomy,_ muttering under my breath. _Pollex_ (that one was alright); _digitus index_ (cracked, but straight); _digitus impudicus_ (I'll dedicate that one to Hobnails forevermore); _digitus cordis_ (a goddamn mess). I considered amputating the little finger and might have done, if I'd had a knife. God, what I would not have done for some of Dr. Parkman's morphine. What I had was my filthy undershirt and a piece of dense black bread that I moulded into a splint of sorts, letting it go stale around my fingers to keep them from curling in on themselves. I might starve, but I'd want the hand if I didn't.

Now it seems that I could have saved myself the trouble.

"I can't do it, Sam," I say, barely able to squeeze the words between my teeth as I collapse onto the bank. "Just leave me."

"Bullshit you can't," he spits, leaning down into my face. "You're the stubbornest son of a bitch on God's green earth and you _will_ swim that river."

I try to rise and have to swallow a scream of pain that comes out as a grunt. I open and close my eyes hard several times, trying to clear my jittery vision, but to little effect. "It's no use. You've got to go on. Now, before they catch up."

"I'm not leaving you, Blythe."

"Yes, you are."

He'd like to argue with me, if only because he hates to lose. But he's not stupid.

"Well then, I'm coming back for you."

I would laugh if I had breath. "Go Sam. To Holland. To Blighty. To Canada."

He's done talking, but not done arguing. There's not much I can do to stop him when he seizes me by the shoulders and drags me up the slope, kicking leaves back over our tracks. Ten yards from the riverbank, there is a thick stand of blackthorn bramble, leafy and overgrown and menacing in the dark. Sam drags me under and deposits me in the thorn dense gloom beneath, patting down the branches as he backs away.

"Stay there," he says unnecessarily. "When I come back, I'll call for you. What's a bird they've got around here?"

"There's no need, Sam."

"How about a dove? The Huns must have some of them, mustn't they?"

He makes a gargling sound that's more grackle than dove and I smile in spite of everything. "Well, if their doves sound like that, no wonder they're militarists."

"You do it, then."

There was a time when I _could mimic the call of any wild bird or beast in Four Winds_. It's been a long time, but I shut my eyes and breathe out, turning heart and brain and body toward _dove_. My warbling coo has a few too many consonants hiding in its depths to fool a real dove, but it will do for humans.

"See now," Sam says, reaching down to ruffle my hair. "Can't let talent like that go to waste."

He can't really be serious about coming back for me. Not when he's got this chance.

"Just promise me something, Sam."

"'Course."

"You'll get word to Faith. And when you get home, you'll visit my parents and tell them how it was."

"No need for all that," he says, clearing his throat.

"Say it, Sam."

"There's no need."

"Please, Sam. Just say it so I know you have it in your mind."

"Alright." He takes a shuddering breath, then recites, "Faith Meredith Blythe. St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, or else Glen St. Mary, Prince Edward Island. And Dr. Gilbert Blythe, also Glen St. Mary, PEI."

I lie back on the soft carpet of last year's leaves, satisfied.

"Now you say mine," he orders.

I have enough breath left to snort.

"Say it, Jem."

He never calls me that, never. It's always _Blythe_ or _Blockhead_ or sometimes _You Goddamn Islander_. I'll humor him if it will make him go away sooner.

"Reverend Robert Osbourne, First Presbyterian Church, Hamilton, Ontario."

"And?"

"And Miss Blanche Garfield, Filsham Road, Hastings, who you should have married when you had the chance."

"That's the ticket."

"Think she waited for you?"

"She better."

"You only knew her a month."

"It was a hell of a month."

I can hear the grin in his voice and turn over on my side to get a last shadowed look at him. I reach out my sound hand. "Godspeed, Sam."

He crouches, but doesn't shake it. Instead, he reaches farther and grasps my arm, up near the elbow, clasping around the girth of my forearm so I can feel his pulse beating through my sleeve. I grip back, arm to arm, more than a handshake.

"I'll come back with help," he says.

"Don't. Please."

He stands and backs away, the stubborn set of his jaw telling me he has no intention of seeing sense, damn him. He salutes lazily. Never going to make captain with form like that. But he's up and away, pulling off his boots and strapping them to a log with his belt. Then he's into the river and kicking for the opposite shore, drifting with the current, around a bend and out of sight.

* * *

I owe Jerry an apology.

Three years ago (God, three years? More than that now.) after the first time we fought at Ypres, he got knocked stiff by a shell and spent the night in No Man's Land. He told me that he had seen Nan that night. Not imagined her. He swore he saw her laughing and standing by the spring in Rainbow Valley just as plain as day, and that's how he knew it was all over with him. I nodded and said I believed him, but I didn't really. He'd had a nasty concussion and it wasn't all that surprising that he'd hallucinate, but he swore up and down that she wasn't a mirage but an honest-to-God presence (of course, not even a goddamn war could make Jerry say "honest-to-God," bless him, but that was the gist of it).

I didn't believe him then, but I do now.

I can't see Faith, not in the deep, velvet black of this dismal night. But I can feel her. Warm, solid body laid out against mine, the curve of her head fitted into the hollow of my shoulder. Stranger still, I can smell her. Not just the wild roses of her hair, but that clear, golden scent of her skin and even a whiff of our peppermints. Call it a hallucination (it certainly is). But as long as she'll stay here with me til the end, I guess I don't much care.

* * *

The clerk at the hotel in Bexhill-on-Sea didn't even look at our marriage certificate. I slapped it on the counter when I asked for a room, but I guess he'd seen everything by then. I'm sure Faith must have given me some exasperated look, but honestly I don't remember because she was holding my hand in both of hers and I was accepting a key from the clerk and I couldn't stop grinning like a fool.

I don't remember much about the room either, except that it existed and it had a door and a bed (there may or may not have been other furnishings but they were of little consequence). What I do remember is carrying Faith over the threshold and cracking her head against the frame. Which, in my defense, she had me by the ears and was kissing me for all she was worth, so how was I supposed to see where I was going? But it's bad form to crack your wife's head against the doorjamb, and worse form to grin about it (even if you're only grinning because you just thought the words "my wife" for the tenth time in an hour and it hadn't gotten old yet and maybe never would).

She took her hair down out of the pins and asked me to check to see if her scalp was bleeding (it wasn't). But then her hair was running through my fingers, all warm and tawny-golden and smelling of rose-water. She shivered when I kissed her on the axis bone and kept on going toward her collar and I realized (for maybe the dozenth time) that we were really married at last.

Faith turned in my arms and held me with those amber eyes that make her look like a red-tailed hawk. She was so close, after all this time, and I found myself just studying her, measuring memory against reality. I had photographs of her of course, but those were mostly for showing to other people. They were too still. When I wanted her, I closed my eyes and imagined myself back in our rosebushes, with her breath coming fast and shallow against my neck and hands twisted in the placket of my shirt. She had said it would be a memory to look forward to, which sounded like nonsense at the time, but she was absolutely right.

But now I had a marriage certificate in my pocket and she had a gold band on her finger and everything was different. It was stupid to feel shy, but I did. How many times had I kissed her in the hollow of her throat, along the pulse behind her ear, on eyelids closed over pupils gone wide and dark? All those kisses had been promises of _someday,_ but the next one wouldn't be. The next kiss wouldn't be an apology or an ending, but a whole new beginning. I felt the weight of it.

Something playful twitched at the corners of her mouth. She reached up and took my face in her hands and kissed me so softly that I might have imagined it. And then she was just Faith again and we were just us and everything was going to be alright.

Smiling, I asked, "Have you always been this short?"

She cocked her head to one side and looked up at me with such adorable indignation I just had to kiss the tip of her nose, even though it made her scowl.

"I'm not short," she said shortly. "I'm average height. You're just notably tall."

I settled my hands around her waist. "It's just that, when I remember you, I remember looking you in the eye."

"Eye-to-eye?"

"Yes."

Her eyebrows went all wiggle-shaped and she frowned. "You remember me being six feet tall?"

I laughed. "No, I guess not."

"We would have won a lot more basketball games," she said, hilarity twinkling in her eyes, though she nodded soberly.

"I suppose so. I just remember you . . . bigger somehow."

Without warning, she hooked a foot around my ankle and shoved me in the chest at the same time so that I sat down heavily on the bed. She came to stand between my knees and leaned in so that our foreheads touched and there was nothing in the world but her eyes on a level with mine.

"Better?"

"Much."

She kissed me then, and not the stopping sort of kiss.

Mouth soft and searching, breath hot and quick, and her fingers busy at my collar. She hesitated over the third button, caressing it, pushing it gently into my chest.

"It's all yours, Mrs. Blythe," I whispered, then let my eyes flutter shut as she popped it free.

* * *

I blink away a shaft of morning light, entertaining the possibility that I might not be dead. I don't know much about heaven or hell, but I don't think either looks like a stable.

Someone bends over me, a man I don't recognize. He's filthy, his khaki in tatters, some sort of soiled bandage wadded in the trapezoid muscle between neck and shoulder. It looks to be made of paper.

He brings a canteen to my lips and I sip eagerly, the metallic tang of the water masking some duller flavor underneath that I consciously decline to parse.

"Morning, sunshine," he says, with easy familiarity.

I search his features and feel the vaguest sense of recognition, but I can't come up with a name or even a place where I might know him from. God, do I have a head injury? He's grinning at me like I'm supposed to be pleased to see him. I am, don't get me wrong, but only because he might be able to explain what the hell is going on.

"I'm . . . alive?"

He laughs, offers me more water.

"Yeah, it's a big fuckin' mystery. Guess you're just too damn stubborn to die."

So I've had a close shave, I guess. Probably could have figured that on my own. I try to lift my head to look around, but I'm weak as a baby and just as helpless.

"Where am I?"

He corks the canteen and props it against my camp bed. "Sorry to break it to you, pal, but you're not in the Astor House Hotel or anything. The Huns are calling it a hospital, but it's a barn that smelled better when it was full of pigs."

"We're prisoners?" I sift through vague memories. Arching flares. Barked orders. Slimy mud against my cheek.

"Yep. They brought you in oh, a week and a half, maybe two weeks ago. You already had a fever and have been in and out ever since."

A rumbling boxcar. Huns in our trenches! Go, boys, go! A sledgehammer slamming into my thigh . . .

Abruptly, I try to sit up, but am arrested by a bolt of pain so hot and sharp I think I must know what a lightning strike feels like. I squeeze my eyes shut until they crackle with their own little pops of light, purple and yellow, behind the lids.

"Whoa, whoa," the man says, forcing me back down onto the straw tick. "Easy there, pal."

The bright pain is subsiding into a horrible ache. Another swig from the canteen rinses the bile from my mouth. I have to know.

Slower this time, I prop myself on an elbow and look at my thigh.

It's a goddamn mess.

More of those paper bandages (a lot more). One trouser leg has been cut away, but the other is still khaki, at least beneath the bloodstains. Quite a lot of blood, considering it's the uninjured side. I try to wiggle my toes and gasp at the pain.

"How did I survive this long with _that_?"

The man shrugs. "Like I said, it's a mystery. There are at least a thousand men in this place and exactly four doctors. Russian prisoners. They don't speak a word of English and their supplies are rubbish. But they do what they can when someone gets their attention."

My leg's a disaster, but it has been treated. There's a splint. It seems to have been cleaned at some point. The bandages have been changed, maybe not as recently as I'd like, but within the last couple of days at least.

"You got their attention for me?"

"Yeah, well, you owe me a pack of cigarettes. It was my last one."

I stare. "Why?"

He grins again and slaps the patch on my shoulder, a green half-circle over a red rectangle.

"You're Second Battalion." He taps his own shoulder and I notice the similar patch there, except that his green circle is whole. "I'm First Battalion. We're brigade brothers."

I look him over, trying to place him. Tall, maybe as tall as me, though it's hard to tell sitting. Eyes so dark as to be featureless and fine brown hair cut short, but sticking up at odd angles. He has freckles over the bridge of his nose and when he grins again, it comes to me.

"I remember you! You beat me in the pole pillow fight after the brigade sports meet in . . . _God_ . . . 1915?"

"Sure did. Ducked you good."

"You have a name, brigade brother?"

"I'm Osbourne. Lieutenant Sam Osbourne."

* * *

Another morning and I'm still alive (another mystery). My limbs are leaden, my hand inert, and there aren't anymore roses, only the blackthorn bush above me and the rushing of the river in its bed. Somewhere, a dove coos, but badly.

I shimmy to the edge of my shelter, unbelieving, peering out toward the river. Sam didn't really come back did he?

He did. He brought a boat. A little clinker-built dinghy (where did he get it?) that he pulls up onto the pebbles and stashes under a bit of overhanging bank.

Something hopeful lurches to life in my chest. I could get to it. I really could.

Sam climbs up the slope from the river and stands in the shade of the trees. He coos again, seeming to know that he's close, but not knowing exactly where he left me. Everything looks different in daylight. It's difficult to coo back because I'm grinning and doves have a quieter sort of joy. I relax my throat, allowing myself to think for one single second that I may be on my way home to Faith after all.

I coo.

Sam turns his head, but not toward me. He's heard something alright. His body tenses, crouches, and then he begins to run.

I hear them now, too. Shouting. Blundering. Dogs.

Instinct drives me to shrink back under the blackthorn, though it's foolish. Nothing will stop those dogs if they catch my scent (they will; it's their job).

Sam sprints flat-out, but the Dobermanns are on him before he reaches the slope, not twenty-five yards from where I lie concealed. One at his throat and another at his knees and I can't watch this.

But there's a whistle and a shout and the dogs leave him on the ground, still alive.

There are two German soldiers on foot and an officer on horseback. One of the men (a kid really, with blonde peach fuzz and narrow shoulders, can't be more than fifteen) holds the dogs' empty leashes and congratulates them, offering them treats from a pouch at his belt. The other man puts a knee in Sam's back and delivers a couple of thunderous blows. I recognize him . . . well, I recognize his boots. Hobnailed from heel to toe.

When he's sure Sam is subdued, the Hun pulls him to his feet and frogmarches him to the officer. He keeps a bayonet pointed in the small of Sam's back, the tip cutting through his jacket.

When the officer speaks, I recognize him, too: Hauptmann Lorenz. I guess I should be encouraged that they've sent an officer who's known for speaking some English, rather than one who's known as a marksman.

"Your comrade," Lorenz demands. "Where is he?"

My heart must be audible to them, pounding away as it is. I lie perfectly still, knowing full well that concealment is nothing to those Dobermanns.

"Sorry, fellas, you must have run right past him," Sam says, spitting a gob of blood onto the ground. "He didn't make it more than two miles."

"We did not see him," Lorenz says, his voice clipped and precise.

"I left him under a bush by the stream, then doubled back to make a new trail away from him. Looks like it worked."

Lorenz turns to his men. "Der andere Gefangene hatte eine Verletzung am Oberschenkel. Ist das korrekt?"

"Ja, Herr Hauptmann."

With a nod, Lorenz gives Sam an order. "You will lead us to him."

"I will not."

I wince as Hobnails sinks a fist into Sam's belly. He doubles over, spluttering, but rights himself.

Should I give myself up? Crawl out of this bush and let them take us back to the compound? I doubt I'd make it, but at least they wouldn't have to beat Sam into giving me up. I close my eyes for just a moment, one last moment of stillness before I hoist myself up through the thorns.

Sudden barking, yelling, commotion, a shriek. What happened?

I open my eyes to see a scuffle I can't quite decipher until the morning sun glints on metal and Sam plunges Hobnails's bayonet into Lorenz's gut. Blood blossoms. Lorenz slumps as the horse rears away from the sudden movement. As Lorenz falls, Sam reaches for his sidearm.

There's a crack, but not gunfire. Sam goes down under the butt of Hobnails's rifle. It's all I can do to keep from screaming as the Hun presses the barrel to Sam's temple.

He fires.

Blood floods my own mouth.

The two soldiers hurry and shout at one another, dragging Lorenz from the frightened horse and tearing open his jacket. The dogs yelp and whine, prancing back and forth (not helping the horse much), but I only have eyes for Sam. He lies face-down in a pool of spreading black.

"Is er tot?" the young dog-handler asks Hobnails.

 _Tot_. I know that word. He must be dead, of course. Can't they see all that blood?

But they don't mean Sam.

"Nein. Er atmet. Herr Hauptmann, können Sie mich hören?"

Lorenz groans and moves a little.

"Wir müssen ihn sofort zum Stabsarzt bringen!"

"Was ist mit dem Gefangenen?"

Hobnails retrieves Lorenz's pistol from the ground where it fell. Point-blank, he empties the magazine into Sam, the body jerking with every impact.

"Er ist tot."

"Was ist mit dem anderen?"

"Der ist wahrscheinlich auch längst tot."

They argue back and forth until Lorenz moans again and settles things. I can't get a good look at his wound from here, but there's enough blood that it seems a tossup whether he'll make it back to camp at all.

There's no way Lorenz can ride on his own, so Hobnails mounts the horse and pulls his commander into the saddle in front of him. The horse doesn't like that at all and for one foolish moment I'm afraid that the animal will step on Sam. As if it matters.

Then they're off, with Peachfuzz and his dogs jogging to keep up, back the way they came. The quiet forest closes around them, swallowing even their sounds.

I'm lightheaded, my fingers sunk deep in the litterfall. Consciously, I breathe, only to catch the bright, hot tang of blood on the breeze.

Hand stiff, leg stiff, I claw my way out of my shelter. I clutch my crutch, dragging a deep furrow in the leaves until I reach his side.

There's no need to check for a pulse. Not with his head caved in like that. But I check anyway.

Why did you do it, you stupid bastard? Why did you come back? Why did you go for the bayonet? Why did you save me in the first place, when you could have been better off alone?

For one dizzy moment, I imagine myself lying down beside his body and never getting up. It wouldn't take long, not starved and exhausted as I am. There's a good chance I might not last another night exposed.

But I can't. For one thing, there's Faith. She'd never forgive me (though how would she know I'd given up? She would, somehow.). For another, there's Miss Blanche and Rev. Osbourne. We gave one another burdens to carry and I'll be damned if I'll let him down now. That settles it, I suppose. If I'm going to die, it's got to be after I've passed on word of Sam and what he did for me these past few months. I guess that means Holland, though the _how_ of that is as much a mystery as anything.

But first, I need to dig a grave. Easier said than done. I have a spoon and a mess tin and one good hand, but I'd dig it a thimbleful at a time if I thought I could last that long. I can't leave him unburied, to be picked apart by crows, scattered by dogs or pigs. He deserves better. Scanning the riverbank, I conjure the idea of some sort of cairn, but I'll never be able to carry enough rocks up the slope.

The slope. He hid the boat under an overhanging bit of bank. Maybe . . .

I ease my way down the declivity to the river, bracing myself with my stick. Yes, the boat is drawn up under a crevice where the roots of a fallen tree have kept the soil from collapsing onto the encroaching beach below. It will make a poor grave; like as not, his bones will be washed downriver in the next spring floods. But it's something. It's respectful. And it's all I can manage.

More than I can manage, I think, as I pull Sam down the slope toward the little hollow. I drag the boat out into the open and place Sam as far back under the roots as possible. I arrange him as best I can, arms folded over his chest, his handkerchief spread over the ruin of his face.

A prayer should come to me, but the only thing I can think is that he shouldn't have died. He should be halfway to Amsterdam by now, stubborn goddamn idiot. He should be alive and I should be dead at least twice over and would be if not for him. With my stick, I pull the rocks and dirt down over him, a sprinkle of protection, then a miniature avalanche as a bit of bank gives way and slides over his body. I bring more rocks and pile them on top, as many as I can manage, knowing it's nowhere near enough. But my fingers are raw and bleeding now and my leg is dragging and I barely have the strength to stand propped against my stick.

I have to say something.

"Well, I guess you've been to enough funerals as a minister's kid," I say. "Jerry would know what to do. He'd have some scripture about laying down your life for a friend. Walter, too. He could have prayed you a bully prayer. But I guess you're stuck with me."

I pause because there's nothing I can say that will make this right. He shouldn't have been here, none of us should, and now he's dead and there's nothing to say about that.

"I'll find your father," I say because I will, if I can manage to go on breathing long enough. "And Miss Blanche. I'll write to her if I can't get back to Bexhill."

From somewhere in the woods, a dove coos (a real one). I look but can't see it, so I coo back. It answers me, hesitant at first, but with increasing fluency. I feel absurdly grateful that I won't be leaving him utterly alone.

"Goodbye, Sam."

I'm sure I'll faint, but somehow I manhandle the boat into the water and collapse over the gunwale. With my stick, I push off from the bank, poling til I can't reach the bottom anymore. Then I lie back in the bilges of this fragile little craft, thinking absurdly of the old story Mum tells of Avonlea and Camelot and other sorts of make-believe. The current lifts me and away I go, wherever it takes me.


	5. A Little While

**A Little While**

* * *

April 16, 1917

Aster House, Kingsport, Nova Scotia

(Dispatches, Chapter 30: "With Mine Own Hand")

(Di)

* * *

Nan is quiet at last. Sleeping? Perhaps. She still shudders a bit with every breath.

I stroke her hair and murmur to her, promising I will take her home to Rainbow Valley. She only curls herself tighter around the pillow.

The telegram didn't come to Aster House. Of course not. That's not how these things work. The Army papers list a soldier's next of kin, and for Jerry, that's still his parents. That's where telegrams go when there's something to tell. If they had been married before he left, it would have come to her, but who could have imagined all this back then? They always thought they had plenty of time. We all did, I suppose.

Of course, we got the telephone call as soon as the Manse had the news. Rosemary called, not Mr. Meredith. At first, Faith assumed the call was for her and answered brightly, but I watched her face fall and felt supper turn sour in my stomach. Beside me, Nan dropped her bobbins in a tangle and went to take the receiver like someone being led to the block.

She didn't cry on the phone, only sounded very small, answering Rosemary in single syllables. When she hung up, all she said was, "Wounded."

That was hours ago. Faith and I helped her upstairs and Sylvia made a heartening broth that's still over on the nightstand, congealing. The same she made for us last fall, I suppose. I don't think I ever tasted it.

When they left us, I helped Nan on with her nightgown and sat beside her as she hugged her knees.

"Tell me about hospitals," she whispered. "Where is he now?"

I explained as best I could. How wounded men were treated at dressing stations at the front and then sent to a Casualty Clearing Station nearby and then, when they were stable, on to a General Hospital. Jerry would get good treatment there, and maybe surgery if he needed it. Then, once he was on the mend, they'd send him to a convalescent hospital.

"It's been a whole week since Vimy Ridge," I said, "so he'll be in a General Hospital by now. A warm, clean bed. The best doctors Canada can send."

"Wounded in the back," she said, those huge hazel eyes like burnt holes in a blanket. "What might that mean?"

She needed the truth, but tenderly. "It could mean just about anything."

" _Seriously wounded_ , Di."

I took her hands between mine and tried to warm them. "We'll just have to wait a little while for his letter. You know he's writing, maybe even this very minute."

"You think so?"

I smoothed back an errant, nut-brown lock. "You two grinds are singlehandedly keeping paper mills in business. I'm going to throw stamps at your wedding and call your firstborn Nibby, no matter what you name her."

She laughed a single sob, then dropped her head to my shoulder.

"I wish I were brave," she said. "Like you and Faith and Sylvia."

I almost told her then. The whole truth. How I had been dreading this week even before the telegram about Jerry. How I was terrified of U-boats in the North Atlantic and zeppelins over London. How I only hoped that I could persevere as she had through these long, long years of separation, but that I wasn't sure I could bear it. If there were ever news to tell, it wouldn't come to me, either. I almost told her the truth, and I wish I had.

Instead, I helped her climb under the covers and held her while she trembled.

Now, the window has gone dark and my arm tingles, but I don't want to disturb her. I can't do a thing for Jerry and I can't stop Sylvia from leaving, but I can take care of Nan. I'll take her home to Mother and Dad in a few days, hide her away from the world. Exams can go hang.

A flicker of quavering light glows in the doorway and I blink up at Faith, golden-brown curls escaping her braid and falling over the shoulders of her flannel nightgown. She smiles that angelic smile, though her eyes are sunken in the aftermath of many tears.

"Let me stay with her a little while," she murmurs. I open my mouth to object, but Faith meets my eye. "You need to be elsewhere, don't you?"

Her eyes are amber in the lamplight, like a hawk's, sharp and steady and seeing. They hold mine. We've never spoken frankly, though I think she worked things out ages ago.

It's difficult to extricate myself without waking Nan. She sighs and stirs, but Faith has wriggled into the warm hollow I left in the mattress before I'm fairly out of it. She snuggles down next to Nan and shoos me.

I take the lamp and pad down the hall, past my own door to the paisley-papered room at the end of the hall. It's silly to knock.

"Di!"

I'm barely over the threshold before Sylvia has her arms around my neck. I hold the lamp away from her hair and squeeze her with my free arm, burying my face in the lemon scent of her nightgown. We sway, locked together for a long moment before she releases me, takes the lamp from my hand, wipes at my face with her sleeve.

"How is she?"

"Asleep."

"And you?"

I want to say that I'm in a terrible state, of course. How could I be otherwise, with her leaving and Nan grieving and nothing I can do to fix either. But the pink bow of her lips is drooping and there's certainly something I can do about that. She melts away under my kiss, retreating in a smile that breaks it almost before it starts. I will miss them both, her kisses and her smiles, and so much more besides. Today was dreadful and tomorrow may be worse and I don't know how I will go on, kissless and smileless.

"Sit, love," she says, pressing me gently into a chair.

Sylvia clucks as she undoes my garters, pulls the stockings from my feet, the pins from my hair. I kicked off my shoes before getting into bed beside Nan, but that's about it. Now, Sylvia is massaging my scalp with quick, firm fingers and I groan in relief. She sweeps my hair over my shoulder and kisses the back of my neck.

"When are you going to bob it?" she whispers somewhere behind my ear.

She's been teasing me for months over the picture of Irene Castle I cut out of a magazine and pinned to my dresser.

"Would you like me like that? With my hair all short?"

Her fingers are still moving, loosening the tight places where the pins have lain too long. It's a satisfying sort of pain.

"I like you every way. But you'd be devilishly handsome shorn."

She means it. When we saw _Poor Little Peppina_ at the cinema, the whole crowd gasped in horror at the cutting of Mary Pickford's curls, but Syl squeezed my thigh in the dark, her fingers as sharp as the teeth biting her lower lip to keep her from singing out her laughter.

"Get your scissors."

Had she meant right now? Maybe not. But if I've learned anything at all, it's that right now is all we have. Besides, I'd cut off my nose if it would please her.

Sylvia steps around the chair to see if I am serious, which I am. Then it's just a matter of combs and shears and water in the basin.

"Ready?" she asks, poised with a lock of my hair in her hand.

I tighten the towel she has draped around my shoulders. "Ready."

Sylvia's clever fingers making quick work of the copper waves. Bright hanks fall around me and I think of the Greeks in Walter's stories who were shorn in mourning. How satisfying to carry your love visibly like that. I feel it every time I wear my hospital garb, keeping faith the best way I know how. Now, people will look at my my hair askance and I will smile.

When she finishes, I feel lighter. Hair can't weigh so very much, can it? But I shake my head like a pup reveling in new spring grass and feel reborn. Sylvia takes the measure of my new style with a playful ruffle, then slides a hand down to my cheek.

"Very dashing," she says against my lips.

She's going soon, but she's here right now.

"Syl," I say, taking her face between my hands. Such a short time to lay in a sufficient store for the hard season ahead.

She returns my kisses and nudges me to my feet. I need no convincing. I am already walking her backward, taking a kiss for every step. When the bed interrupts our progress, I turn again, alighting on the edge and leaving her standing before me. We are of a height now that I am sitting, and she holds me with a frank and steady gaze.

"You know that I love you," she says, pushing up my skirt so that she can stand between my knees, arms draped around my neck. "I won't go if you want me to stay."

If only I could ask that of her. If only I could dig my fingers into her skirts and say _stay of course you must stay I need you too much to let you go_. I never would. She wants to go, is blazing with the righteousness of going, and I am only sorry that I'm not going, too.

"I will always want you just exactly where you are right now," I say, stroking down her sides and resting my hands on her hips. "But we both have work to do, and I won't keep you from yours."

If I had only wanted smiles, I might find myself disappointed by her reply, but I am greedy for every one of the kisses she presses to my mouth. She tastes like July, like cherries or currants or raspberries left a day too long on the vine. Bright and ripe, with a late mellow note when her tongue finds mine. She is all over fullness: the gentle curve of her shoulders as I ease her nightgown down over her arms, the soft roundness of her belly, the swell of her breast filling my cupped hand. In the moonlight, she reminds me of the bronze statue Mother keeps in the sitting room at Ingleside: Artemis of the Silver Bow. How many hours did I spend following those arcs, bare breasts and graceful bow thrumming with tension in her capable hands? Now my own hands are proficient. I lay her down on the coverlet, smiling, kissing, and ask a question with my fingertips. Will you let me worship you a little while, if a little while is all we have?


End file.
